It's Not On Congress

This post was going to be on another topic, but all this talk of "It's Congress' fault" regarding the human carnage that has become our immigration enforcement system has just driven me right-round-the-bend! I have been raising children for 42 years - too long to fall for the "When I do something right, that's me . . . When I do something wrong, that's someone else" routine. Congress is not responsible for all of the mess we are in now. Congress determines the laws. Congress does not determine how those laws are enforced. Congress did not mandate that they be enforced under this administration in such an extreme way. President Obama is now on track to pass Eisenhower and his "Operation Wetback" for the highest number of illegal immigrants ever deported by one president; he has already passed every other U.S. president in the history of our country in the number of innocent and non-dangerous immigrants deported.

The claim is that the majority of immigrants deported were criminals. Do you want to know what constitutes a criminal by this administration's standards? A mother of four who has lived and worked legally in this country for decades and has a DUI is a criminal worthy of deportation - her citizen husband and children be-damned. A U.S. military veteran of the war in Iraq caught smoking pot is a criminal worthy of deportation - never mind that Obama himself admits that he smoked pot in the past. A man who shoplifted or got caught with drugs as a teenager TWENTY YEARS AGO, paid the price and has since gone on to have a family, start a business and become an upstanding member of his community is a criminal worthy of deportation - to hell with his family, his employees and his community. That is where those statistics are coming from - they are as bloated and as misleading as any statistic coming out of the white supremacist based anti-immigration organizations Washington D.C. is so fond of catering to.

Yes, Congress does need to change some of these insane laws, but Congress does not mandate that ICE be allowed to break as many laws as they want, to commit as many human rights abuses and atrocities as they want in their constant quest to up their deportation statistics. Congress does not dictate that detention should be under worse conditions than the incarceration of criminals. Congress does not promote the obsessive prosecution by ICE of immigrants seeking relief from deportation under the Convention Against Torture. Congress has not one thing to do with any of this!

Our Deporter in Chief has now shown that he is responsible for what is done under his watch. He made that quite clear when our Navy Seals went in and took out Bin Laden. That is good to know - that our president is not asleep at the wheel. I never thought he was. It took a lot to ramp up the voracious deportation machine that is now devouring immigrant and citizen lives alike at an alarming rate - it has not "just happened" all on its own. All those destroyed lives, all those tears, all that waste . . . that is not on Congress!